King_Rizzy
PPCL Hall of Famer
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2012
- Runs
- 14,398
This week in the PakPassion Member Interview, we have a fascinating account from someone who shares his political views extensively, how the future of Pakistan can be shaped and improved from it's current state. He also speaks about his favourite cricket captain as well as his most cherished childhood memory.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Tanzeel.
PakPassion.net: As someone who holds a degree in Electrical Engineering, what future do you see for Engineering graduates in Pakistan? Do they stick to core branches or move to software?
Tanzeel: The trend of engineering graduates moving to software is a lot less prevalent in Pakistan than it is in India. Most people tend to stick to their respective fields. As it is, there’s a glut of Computer Science graduates so firms prefer to hire them instead of graduates in other disciplines and train them from scratch. Engineering also happens to be one of the highest paying profession and someone with 3-5 years of high quality work experience can easily make twice what someone with a similar amount of experience would writing software or working in a bank. Amongst the people I know who have graduated with an engineering degree recently, around a quarter are working at local universities, mainly in research, quite a few are in the power sector (a lot of work going on there behind the scenes that most people don’t ever get to hear about) and quite a few get into engineering consultancy. As for the future, I can’t really say much since that depends on how the economy shapes up but this particular sector seems to be doing fairly well compared to the rest of the economy so fingers crossed.
PakPassion.net: Who has been your greatest political influence and your all-time favourite liberal thinker?
Tanzeel: Greatest political influence would have to be one of Ataturk and Park Chung Hee, and favorite thinker would be Kant. The way Park and Attaturk managed to take their nations from ruins in the aftermath of devastating wars and turn them around into major global players is remarkable and something that has not been done too often. Pakistan currently could use someone like them, more so Park than Attaturk because you need a strong hand to deal with the people of Pakistan and also because his approach proved to be the more successful one in the long run.
PakPassion.net: You are one of the more secular posters on PakPassion - how can religious extremism be combated not only in Pakistan but in the Muslim world?
Tanzeel: Can’t speak about the greater Muslim world since it’s incredibly large and diverse so there’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution here. For Pakistan, to combat extremism, a lot of simple sounding but extremely hard to implement steps will have to be taken on an urgent basis. The first thing that needs to be done is to educate the people. Universal education needs to be provided free of cost to everyone in order to allow them to develop critical reasoning skills and prevent them from falling under the influence of religious hardliners. A Singapore style law needs to be implemented where any parents/guardians preventing their children from attending school be charged with a crime and face harsh penalties including heavy fines and potential jail time for repeat offenders. The next step would be to use this educated population to develop a strong economy. Widespread economic prosperity is poison for religious extremism and religion in general as evidenced by the strong correlation between the level of development in a country and the level of apathy towards religion there, the US being the only highly developed country where religion is still a strong political force and even there, the highly religious bible belt states rank near the bottom on economic and development indicators compared to the liberal northeastern states that rank near the top.
This should largely take care of the problem, leaving extremism on the fringes of society compared to the mainstream force that it is today. Once that is achieved, it should cease to be much of an issue since it only poses a credible threat when it is endorsed by a majority of the people.
PakPassion.net: What are your views on the future of Pakistan (economically, socially, politically, religiously, etc)? Do you think there's a realistic chance of a revolution being brought? What do you think is the best governing model for Pakistan to follow? Do you think a 'secular' governing model (or 'neutrality' of sorts) could work?
Tanzeel: This is complicated. I don’t really see much changing for Pakistan economically, socially or politically any time in the near future. The economy is woefully underdeveloped for a country of 200 million people and for the next five years at least, it shall continue this trend of growing just enough to stay afloat without any major advancement. The key reason for that is that the economy doesn’t have a platform to launch itself off of. After 65 years of independence, the country’s largest industrial export is textiles followed by agricultural products. You need to develop your local industries for your economy to progress past the lower middle income stage and that takes 25-30 years at the very least even with the most exceptional cases (South Korea, Taiwan). This is a process that Pakistan will have to start from zero. Socially and politically, things will continue to get worse until someone takes charge of the situation and brings about extensive reforms to deal with the plethora of problems facing the country. You need a strong leader to take the status quo on (no, Imran Khan isn’t it despite him claiming to be just that), use whatever means are necessary including lethal force to tackle the issue of religious extremism, enforce mandatory universal education whether the people like it or not and establish a firm rule of law where all are equal before it.
The best governing model, in my personal opinion, would the South Korean and Japanese model from the 1950s and 1960s, particularly Korea under Park Chung Hee (Japan’s situation was a little different while Korea’s was almost exactly the same as Pakistan’s today). Park was a dictator who oversaw the industrialization of South Korea from scratch between 1961 and 1979. Massive incentives were offered to industrial groups to develop their brands and market them worldwide, education was given top priority (Korea in the late 50s was even more illiterate than Pakistan is today). There were blatant human rights violations but in the long run, things evened themselves out and democracy was established in 1987 and it has been fairly smooth sailing ever since bar the 1997 financial crisis. If Pakistan can do even half of what the Koreans did, things will improve drastically in the decades to come. As far as whether or not secularism could work, the answer at this point would be no. The public isn’t ready for it and it does not understand the concept. In the long run, once the population is sufficiently educated and developed, it would be easier to transition into it. Till then, all the focus needs to be on developing the economy. Once that is accomplished, the other social issues will sort themselves out.
PakPassion.net: Following on the from the previous questions, what does the Pakistani community need to address/change in order to prosper in the long term? How can people be made to carry out their citizen responsibilities of paying taxes, etc, like in other countries?
Tanzeel: First and foremost is education. Currently, education is not being given its due importance not just by the government but the people too. There’s a trend amongst the rural population of Pakistan to have a lot of children with the intent to have them enter the unskilled workforce when they turn 12-13 and live off of them in your later years or to marry them off early if they’re girls. This creates two very serious problems. One, the population grows at an alarming and unsustainable rate and most of the new entrants to the population turn out to be a burden on the nation instead of an asset due to their lack of any skills that might be useful to the economy, and two, this massive population, by virtue of the very reason of its existence, is largely uneducated and surrounded by a culture of intolerance and corruption, which creates a very volatile environment for the future. In order for Pakistan to prosper, a concerted effort needs to be made to create awareness among the people of these issues and to point them in the right direction. The people too, much more so than the authorities, need to take responsibilities for their actions. A certain amount of effort will be required by the authorities to make people take responsibility since Pakistanis are not renowned for their sense of civic duty. You need a setup where there are strong laws in place against elements that cause harm to the society at large e.g. tax evasion, withholding education from children under your charge, promoting violence against certain segments of society for whatever reason. There’s a very popular phrase in Urdu, ‘danday ki zabaan samjhna’ and you need a very big ‘danda’ (cane) here to do a lot of talking.
PakPassion.net: It’s been noticed at times that you have a less than esteemed opinion about British Pakistani’s. What developed that opinion?
Tanzeel: To me, this particular community represents the very worst traits of Pakistani culture all rolled up into one package. This is one of the most poorly educated and least successful communities in the country despite having 50 years and three generations to adapt to the new environment, religious extremism is at levels comparable to Pakistan, not a day goes by when a member of the community isn’t in the news for the wrong reasons and there seems to be an obsession with preserving an archaic culture that was obsolete 30 years ago. The main reason however is their insistence on associating with Pakistan and a sense of entitlement with regards to Pakistan. I can understand the immigrants wishing to maintain ties and have a say in matters pertaining to their homeland but when the second/third/fourth generation (and each generation for some reason tends to get progressively worse) British Pakistanis, most of whom have inherited their Pakistani citizenship from their parents/grandparents courtesy Pakistan’s ridiculous nationality law, go around claiming to ‘represent’ Pakistan, I take exception. Pakistan is for Pakistanis and for someone to have a sense of entitlement, demanding the right to vote for instance, is offensive to a lot of Pakistanis when these very same people would never in a million years choose to live in Pakistan.
PakPassion.net: Why do you choose to stay in Pakistan instead of moving abroad, to more economically viable and secular countries? What places would you like to visit, that you haven't been to yet?
Tanzeel: Things were pretty good in Pakistan when I was planning all this stuff out. The country was less conservative compared to today, there was a greater degree of personal freedom and the economy was doing alright. That is obviously no longer the case. I haven’t ruled out moving abroad, mostly for social reasons rather than economic ones. I’m doing alright for myself here financially, it’s the social environment that I don’t like. I would not want to raise a family in a country where the religious right exercises the kind of power that it does in Pakistan. The culture and social norms here can be pretty stifling for someone who doesn’t think the way the rest of society does and I happen to be that kind of person. I don’t particularly like the ‘Islamic way of life’ as it exists in Pakistan and if things continue to go the way they are, I would seriously consider relocating somewhere more tolerant to my way of life.
The places on top of my ‘to visit’ list are, in no particular order, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, the US and most of Latin America.
PakPassion.net: Suggest 5 must read books on Pakistan.
Tanzeel: Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid.
Blasphemy by Tehmina Durrani
Shame by Salman Rushdie
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen
From Jinnah to Zia by Mohammad Munir
PakPassion.net: After posting on this forum, have any of your worldly views changed?
Tanzeel: No, not really. Most of what I’ve come across here has been in line with what I already knew and believed in. The British Pakistani contingent is especially conservative, the Pakistani Americans are doing better for themselves than their counterparts elsewhere, Indians love to troll.
PakPassion.net: What do you mean when you say you're not a practicing Muslim?
Tanzeel: Means that I believe in the Islamic God along with all the history including the revelations and the Prophets along with the fact that Mohammad (PBUH) was the last prophet but I don’t necessarily agree with everything about the religion. I don’t pray, I don’t abstain from alcohol or non-Halal meat among other things, and I don’t believe that it is a religion for all times in it’s original form. I see the Muslim world refusing to let it evolve and I see them at the bottom of the barrel in terms of social and economic conditions so clearly something is not right.
PakPassion.net: Moving on to cricket now, who do you feel is the best Pakistani captain in recent times? What did you admire about him?
Tanzeel: Misbah. What he’s done with the team over the last year and a half has been amazing. He inherited a team that was low on confidence, hadn’t won much in a while and was plagued by all sorts of locker room issues. He took responsibility where very few others would have and proceeded to turn it into one of the most successful Pakistani teams in recent memory. The best thing about him is that unlike his predecessor, one Shahid Khan Afridi, he’s all about the team with very little consideration for personal accolades (at the team’s expense). He has kept his head down all this time, stayed out of the spotlight all the while producing results that very few Pakistani captains have been able to produce.
PakPassion.net: In your opinion, is test cricket (the only) real form of cricket?
Tanzeel: Not at all. Every format has its place; it’s just that I don’t see T20 as a legitimate format of cricket. It’s like comparing the WWE to UFC. They both involve physical combat but one is the real deal whilst the other is all show. For all their glitz and glamor, in a legitimate brawl, a WWE guy would have his rear end handed to him on a platter by an MMA guy. Similarly, there’s very little genuine cricket skill involved in T20s compared to test cricket and the 50 over format, my personal favorite. It speaks volumes about a format when you’re more concerned with the result than you’d much rather get the result from Cricinfo than watch the game itself.
PakPassion.net: What are your top 3 favourite memories relating to Pakistan cricket?
Tanzeel: 1 – Madras test against India in 1999. Absolutely amazing game that could’ve gone either way till the last wicket. What made it all the more special was Tendulkar failing to get past the fence after getting so close.
2 – Umar Gul’s five wicket haul against India in Lahore, back in 2004. I watched most of the game alone in my hospital bed and Gul’s been my favorite cricketer ever since. The first guy from my hometown to really make it big on the international circuit.
3 – India vs Pakistan, Champions Trophy 2009. We were watching the game in our university’s bar with the Indians who outnumbered us 3 to 1 and all through the game the atmosphere was electric. When Amir came on to bowl, an Indian made some less than flattering remarks about him and when he got Tendulkar a couple deliveries later, the whole place erupted.
PakPassion.net: If you could be reborn in another era (in the past) - which one would you choose and why?
Tanzeel: If I could be reborn in another era, I’d probably pick the 1940s. This way I could get to live in the Pakistan that I wish existed today, the tolerant and progressive Pakistan of the 60s and 70s.
PakPassion.net: You have Opeth's logo as your avatar, suggesting you're partial to a spot of metal? What other music/bands do you like?
Tanzeel: Mainly metal, prog rock, the occasional dose of trance and when I’m in the mood, rap but not the crap you get these days, old school rap (NWA, Eric B and Rakim, Nas etc.). Favorite bands would be Opeth obviously, Gordian Knot, Dream Theater, Cynic, Katatonia, Symphony X, Porcupine Tree, Judas Priest, Megadeth and In Flames among others.
PakPassion.net: What's the one memory from your childhood that will forever remain etched in your mind?
Tanzeel: One childhood memory I’ll never forget would have to be my fifth birthday. I know it’s not something dramatic or life changing but it’s the first thing that came to mind when I tried to think of a childhood memory. It was in Karachi, we lived in an old colonial era house in Malir and it was my last birthday there (the next one was in Peshawar). There were easily 200 people there, most of whom I haven’t met in a good 15 years but I still remember. I had this giant chocolate cake shaped like a guitar that was almost as big as me and bigger than my sister with the fret board done in dark chocolate. I remember tasting some of the dark chocolate bit after everyone had left and puking my guts out.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Tanzeel.
PakPassion.net: As someone who holds a degree in Electrical Engineering, what future do you see for Engineering graduates in Pakistan? Do they stick to core branches or move to software?
Tanzeel: The trend of engineering graduates moving to software is a lot less prevalent in Pakistan than it is in India. Most people tend to stick to their respective fields. As it is, there’s a glut of Computer Science graduates so firms prefer to hire them instead of graduates in other disciplines and train them from scratch. Engineering also happens to be one of the highest paying profession and someone with 3-5 years of high quality work experience can easily make twice what someone with a similar amount of experience would writing software or working in a bank. Amongst the people I know who have graduated with an engineering degree recently, around a quarter are working at local universities, mainly in research, quite a few are in the power sector (a lot of work going on there behind the scenes that most people don’t ever get to hear about) and quite a few get into engineering consultancy. As for the future, I can’t really say much since that depends on how the economy shapes up but this particular sector seems to be doing fairly well compared to the rest of the economy so fingers crossed.
PakPassion.net: Who has been your greatest political influence and your all-time favourite liberal thinker?
Tanzeel: Greatest political influence would have to be one of Ataturk and Park Chung Hee, and favorite thinker would be Kant. The way Park and Attaturk managed to take their nations from ruins in the aftermath of devastating wars and turn them around into major global players is remarkable and something that has not been done too often. Pakistan currently could use someone like them, more so Park than Attaturk because you need a strong hand to deal with the people of Pakistan and also because his approach proved to be the more successful one in the long run.
PakPassion.net: You are one of the more secular posters on PakPassion - how can religious extremism be combated not only in Pakistan but in the Muslim world?
Tanzeel: Can’t speak about the greater Muslim world since it’s incredibly large and diverse so there’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution here. For Pakistan, to combat extremism, a lot of simple sounding but extremely hard to implement steps will have to be taken on an urgent basis. The first thing that needs to be done is to educate the people. Universal education needs to be provided free of cost to everyone in order to allow them to develop critical reasoning skills and prevent them from falling under the influence of religious hardliners. A Singapore style law needs to be implemented where any parents/guardians preventing their children from attending school be charged with a crime and face harsh penalties including heavy fines and potential jail time for repeat offenders. The next step would be to use this educated population to develop a strong economy. Widespread economic prosperity is poison for religious extremism and religion in general as evidenced by the strong correlation between the level of development in a country and the level of apathy towards religion there, the US being the only highly developed country where religion is still a strong political force and even there, the highly religious bible belt states rank near the bottom on economic and development indicators compared to the liberal northeastern states that rank near the top.
This should largely take care of the problem, leaving extremism on the fringes of society compared to the mainstream force that it is today. Once that is achieved, it should cease to be much of an issue since it only poses a credible threat when it is endorsed by a majority of the people.
PakPassion.net: What are your views on the future of Pakistan (economically, socially, politically, religiously, etc)? Do you think there's a realistic chance of a revolution being brought? What do you think is the best governing model for Pakistan to follow? Do you think a 'secular' governing model (or 'neutrality' of sorts) could work?
Tanzeel: This is complicated. I don’t really see much changing for Pakistan economically, socially or politically any time in the near future. The economy is woefully underdeveloped for a country of 200 million people and for the next five years at least, it shall continue this trend of growing just enough to stay afloat without any major advancement. The key reason for that is that the economy doesn’t have a platform to launch itself off of. After 65 years of independence, the country’s largest industrial export is textiles followed by agricultural products. You need to develop your local industries for your economy to progress past the lower middle income stage and that takes 25-30 years at the very least even with the most exceptional cases (South Korea, Taiwan). This is a process that Pakistan will have to start from zero. Socially and politically, things will continue to get worse until someone takes charge of the situation and brings about extensive reforms to deal with the plethora of problems facing the country. You need a strong leader to take the status quo on (no, Imran Khan isn’t it despite him claiming to be just that), use whatever means are necessary including lethal force to tackle the issue of religious extremism, enforce mandatory universal education whether the people like it or not and establish a firm rule of law where all are equal before it.
The best governing model, in my personal opinion, would the South Korean and Japanese model from the 1950s and 1960s, particularly Korea under Park Chung Hee (Japan’s situation was a little different while Korea’s was almost exactly the same as Pakistan’s today). Park was a dictator who oversaw the industrialization of South Korea from scratch between 1961 and 1979. Massive incentives were offered to industrial groups to develop their brands and market them worldwide, education was given top priority (Korea in the late 50s was even more illiterate than Pakistan is today). There were blatant human rights violations but in the long run, things evened themselves out and democracy was established in 1987 and it has been fairly smooth sailing ever since bar the 1997 financial crisis. If Pakistan can do even half of what the Koreans did, things will improve drastically in the decades to come. As far as whether or not secularism could work, the answer at this point would be no. The public isn’t ready for it and it does not understand the concept. In the long run, once the population is sufficiently educated and developed, it would be easier to transition into it. Till then, all the focus needs to be on developing the economy. Once that is accomplished, the other social issues will sort themselves out.
PakPassion.net: Following on the from the previous questions, what does the Pakistani community need to address/change in order to prosper in the long term? How can people be made to carry out their citizen responsibilities of paying taxes, etc, like in other countries?
Tanzeel: First and foremost is education. Currently, education is not being given its due importance not just by the government but the people too. There’s a trend amongst the rural population of Pakistan to have a lot of children with the intent to have them enter the unskilled workforce when they turn 12-13 and live off of them in your later years or to marry them off early if they’re girls. This creates two very serious problems. One, the population grows at an alarming and unsustainable rate and most of the new entrants to the population turn out to be a burden on the nation instead of an asset due to their lack of any skills that might be useful to the economy, and two, this massive population, by virtue of the very reason of its existence, is largely uneducated and surrounded by a culture of intolerance and corruption, which creates a very volatile environment for the future. In order for Pakistan to prosper, a concerted effort needs to be made to create awareness among the people of these issues and to point them in the right direction. The people too, much more so than the authorities, need to take responsibilities for their actions. A certain amount of effort will be required by the authorities to make people take responsibility since Pakistanis are not renowned for their sense of civic duty. You need a setup where there are strong laws in place against elements that cause harm to the society at large e.g. tax evasion, withholding education from children under your charge, promoting violence against certain segments of society for whatever reason. There’s a very popular phrase in Urdu, ‘danday ki zabaan samjhna’ and you need a very big ‘danda’ (cane) here to do a lot of talking.
PakPassion.net: It’s been noticed at times that you have a less than esteemed opinion about British Pakistani’s. What developed that opinion?
Tanzeel: To me, this particular community represents the very worst traits of Pakistani culture all rolled up into one package. This is one of the most poorly educated and least successful communities in the country despite having 50 years and three generations to adapt to the new environment, religious extremism is at levels comparable to Pakistan, not a day goes by when a member of the community isn’t in the news for the wrong reasons and there seems to be an obsession with preserving an archaic culture that was obsolete 30 years ago. The main reason however is their insistence on associating with Pakistan and a sense of entitlement with regards to Pakistan. I can understand the immigrants wishing to maintain ties and have a say in matters pertaining to their homeland but when the second/third/fourth generation (and each generation for some reason tends to get progressively worse) British Pakistanis, most of whom have inherited their Pakistani citizenship from their parents/grandparents courtesy Pakistan’s ridiculous nationality law, go around claiming to ‘represent’ Pakistan, I take exception. Pakistan is for Pakistanis and for someone to have a sense of entitlement, demanding the right to vote for instance, is offensive to a lot of Pakistanis when these very same people would never in a million years choose to live in Pakistan.
PakPassion.net: Why do you choose to stay in Pakistan instead of moving abroad, to more economically viable and secular countries? What places would you like to visit, that you haven't been to yet?
Tanzeel: Things were pretty good in Pakistan when I was planning all this stuff out. The country was less conservative compared to today, there was a greater degree of personal freedom and the economy was doing alright. That is obviously no longer the case. I haven’t ruled out moving abroad, mostly for social reasons rather than economic ones. I’m doing alright for myself here financially, it’s the social environment that I don’t like. I would not want to raise a family in a country where the religious right exercises the kind of power that it does in Pakistan. The culture and social norms here can be pretty stifling for someone who doesn’t think the way the rest of society does and I happen to be that kind of person. I don’t particularly like the ‘Islamic way of life’ as it exists in Pakistan and if things continue to go the way they are, I would seriously consider relocating somewhere more tolerant to my way of life.
The places on top of my ‘to visit’ list are, in no particular order, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, the US and most of Latin America.
PakPassion.net: Suggest 5 must read books on Pakistan.
Tanzeel: Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid.
Blasphemy by Tehmina Durrani
Shame by Salman Rushdie
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen
From Jinnah to Zia by Mohammad Munir
PakPassion.net: After posting on this forum, have any of your worldly views changed?
Tanzeel: No, not really. Most of what I’ve come across here has been in line with what I already knew and believed in. The British Pakistani contingent is especially conservative, the Pakistani Americans are doing better for themselves than their counterparts elsewhere, Indians love to troll.
PakPassion.net: What do you mean when you say you're not a practicing Muslim?
Tanzeel: Means that I believe in the Islamic God along with all the history including the revelations and the Prophets along with the fact that Mohammad (PBUH) was the last prophet but I don’t necessarily agree with everything about the religion. I don’t pray, I don’t abstain from alcohol or non-Halal meat among other things, and I don’t believe that it is a religion for all times in it’s original form. I see the Muslim world refusing to let it evolve and I see them at the bottom of the barrel in terms of social and economic conditions so clearly something is not right.
PakPassion.net: Moving on to cricket now, who do you feel is the best Pakistani captain in recent times? What did you admire about him?
Tanzeel: Misbah. What he’s done with the team over the last year and a half has been amazing. He inherited a team that was low on confidence, hadn’t won much in a while and was plagued by all sorts of locker room issues. He took responsibility where very few others would have and proceeded to turn it into one of the most successful Pakistani teams in recent memory. The best thing about him is that unlike his predecessor, one Shahid Khan Afridi, he’s all about the team with very little consideration for personal accolades (at the team’s expense). He has kept his head down all this time, stayed out of the spotlight all the while producing results that very few Pakistani captains have been able to produce.
PakPassion.net: In your opinion, is test cricket (the only) real form of cricket?
Tanzeel: Not at all. Every format has its place; it’s just that I don’t see T20 as a legitimate format of cricket. It’s like comparing the WWE to UFC. They both involve physical combat but one is the real deal whilst the other is all show. For all their glitz and glamor, in a legitimate brawl, a WWE guy would have his rear end handed to him on a platter by an MMA guy. Similarly, there’s very little genuine cricket skill involved in T20s compared to test cricket and the 50 over format, my personal favorite. It speaks volumes about a format when you’re more concerned with the result than you’d much rather get the result from Cricinfo than watch the game itself.
PakPassion.net: What are your top 3 favourite memories relating to Pakistan cricket?
Tanzeel: 1 – Madras test against India in 1999. Absolutely amazing game that could’ve gone either way till the last wicket. What made it all the more special was Tendulkar failing to get past the fence after getting so close.
2 – Umar Gul’s five wicket haul against India in Lahore, back in 2004. I watched most of the game alone in my hospital bed and Gul’s been my favorite cricketer ever since. The first guy from my hometown to really make it big on the international circuit.
3 – India vs Pakistan, Champions Trophy 2009. We were watching the game in our university’s bar with the Indians who outnumbered us 3 to 1 and all through the game the atmosphere was electric. When Amir came on to bowl, an Indian made some less than flattering remarks about him and when he got Tendulkar a couple deliveries later, the whole place erupted.
PakPassion.net: If you could be reborn in another era (in the past) - which one would you choose and why?
Tanzeel: If I could be reborn in another era, I’d probably pick the 1940s. This way I could get to live in the Pakistan that I wish existed today, the tolerant and progressive Pakistan of the 60s and 70s.
PakPassion.net: You have Opeth's logo as your avatar, suggesting you're partial to a spot of metal? What other music/bands do you like?
Tanzeel: Mainly metal, prog rock, the occasional dose of trance and when I’m in the mood, rap but not the crap you get these days, old school rap (NWA, Eric B and Rakim, Nas etc.). Favorite bands would be Opeth obviously, Gordian Knot, Dream Theater, Cynic, Katatonia, Symphony X, Porcupine Tree, Judas Priest, Megadeth and In Flames among others.
PakPassion.net: What's the one memory from your childhood that will forever remain etched in your mind?
Tanzeel: One childhood memory I’ll never forget would have to be my fifth birthday. I know it’s not something dramatic or life changing but it’s the first thing that came to mind when I tried to think of a childhood memory. It was in Karachi, we lived in an old colonial era house in Malir and it was my last birthday there (the next one was in Peshawar). There were easily 200 people there, most of whom I haven’t met in a good 15 years but I still remember. I had this giant chocolate cake shaped like a guitar that was almost as big as me and bigger than my sister with the fret board done in dark chocolate. I remember tasting some of the dark chocolate bit after everyone had left and puking my guts out.
! Thanks for answering my question
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On the whole, great interview.
